Dave’s Monday Blast – June 2, 2025
Happy June!
We have three box framed pieces of art hanging in the house. Each piece has a single, simple word from the Word. The three words are Faith, Hope, Love. Of course these three in concert with one another are taken from 1 Corinthians 13:13: “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest is love.”
The author of the First15 daily devotional comments: “One of the most life-giving, transformational truths of the gospel is that of everything we have to offer God, of everything in this life we have to give, he most desires our love. To love God is all-encompassing”. Colossians 3:14 says: “And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” To love God is to place ourselves in an never-ending, blessed cycle of giving and receiving limitless love.”
If you think about it, the truth is that God simply wanting our love frees us from systems and practices that are rooted in “should” rather than true desire. INTENTIONAL men of God know that He will take us however He can get us. He’ll take us if all we have to give is a belief that we should serve Him or be with Him. Can you relate to such? But, He does not desire to keep us in this place. He longs to love each of us to such a level that we would live and serve Him out of a place full of devotion as the natural response to His overwhelming love for us.
1 John 4:16 says: “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” First15 comments: “So great is God’s love for us that He makes Himself available for us to abide in Him. So great are His affections for us that we could have Him abiding in us. If we pursue love above all else, we will discover a wellspring of simplicity and life rooted in wholehearted devotion to the God of love”.
The challenge for us today is to put aside the striving and tireless doings and pursue Him for the love of it! Serving the Lord without abiding can be an endless trap, but loving Him is an endless blessing. I have never been good at this…but I am striving to find better ways to abide in Him.
The dictionary definition of abide has five uses of the verb: “to remain, continue, stay”, “to have one’s abode; dwell; reside”, “to put up with; tolerate”, “to endure, sustain, or withstand without yielding or submitting”, and “to wait for; await”. In the bible however, the word takes on a greater intimacy, and is often used to show need, to rely on the Lord in every aspect of one’s life.
So abiding is about being in a place where one remains close, where a relationship is sustained, and there can be an element of waiting as well. The sense of dwelling and enduring is one that is seen often in the Bible as well.
